"Weekend Reading" is a weekly rundown of our favorite stories from around the web.

We Have No Idea How Bad Fashion Actually Is for the Environment
"My journey down the rabbit hole started with this fact: 'The global fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world.' You’ll hear this repeated at panels, on blogs and news sites, and anywhere else sustainable fashion is being discussed."

via: Racked

The "True Denim Capital of the World"​ is a Disgrace to the Industry. We should Act Now!
"If you’re a bit of a Denim enthusiast like me, you are wearing Jeans to work or at home today, and if, like me, you’re a bit of a Jeans fanatic who doesn’t manage hedge funds, your Jeans are fairly run off the mill. The specials I wear today were made in Pakistan. But most of my other Jeans are made across Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor in southern China, and may very well have been made in Xintang, the so-called 'True Denim Capital of the World'."

via: LinkedIn

Diversity Sells
"A new campaign featuring Nike athletes LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Gabby Douglas, among others, is called Equality. On its website, there is a $35 t-shirt — a short-sleeved black crewneck with the “EQUALITY.” printed across the chest in white letters — that “promotes diversity and inclusion and expresses Nike’s commitment to advancing those ideals.” In a culture where more than half of millennial consumers say they’re willing to pay more for brands whose values align with their own, it feels inevitable that the line between social responsibility and smart strategy will get a little blurrier."

via: The Outline

In the Future, We'll All Wear Spider Silk
"Famously tough, it can be stronger than steel and more tear-resistant than Kevlar. Although a human can walk through a spider web with relative ease, that is because each strand is only three-thousandths of a millimetre in diameter. Scaled up to a full millimetre, it’s estimated that a spider web could catch a helicopter as effectively as it currently entraps flies. Spider silk is also extremely elastic and lightweight; some silks can stretch up to five times their length before breaking, and a strand long enough to encircle Earth would weigh just over a pound. The arachnids are excellent chemists, too, often imbuing their silks with water-wicking and antifungal properties."

via: The New Yorker

Who Needs Creative Directors?
"In a world where content is king, can a magazine editor replace a creative director? Andrew Rosen, chief executive of Theory and of Helmut Lang, thinks so. By using Helmut Lang — the minimalist label that helped define the 1990s, and that was reinvented as a contemporary brand when its founder left and the Prada Group sold it in 2006 to Fast Retailing, where Mr. Rosen is a group senior vice president — he is putting his, well, theory, into action."

via: The New York Times

Fashion's Attics
"The purpose of an archive is not just preservation but inspiration, a reminder that, while fashion moves ever forward, each house has a lineage. “It’s a little bit like aristocratic families,” Laudomia Pucci, who runs her family’s archive (another part is housed at her country estate, outside Florence), says. “Either you are or you’re not.” Max Mara’s well-ordered archive projects a bustling competence, in keeping with the well-cut, practical elegance of its clothes. With Ferragamo, the message is craftsmanship and experimentation."

via: The New Yorker

How Trump's Economic Nationalism Could Cripple the Fashion Industry
"Looking back at the way Hitler's nationalistic policies decimated fashion in Nazi-era Germany, you see what could be in store for the US's garment industry if Trump can put 'America First.'"

via: Vice

Exhibition Shows the Dark Side and High Social Price of 'Fast Fashion'
"The exhibition, which invites visitors to look beyond the glam and glitz of fashion, highlights the social, economic, and ecological impacts of mass production and consumerism."

via: Jakarta Globe

No one is more excited for Canada Goose’s IPO than its longtime critic PETA
"Canada Goose, maker of pricey, expedition-ready parkas that double as status symbols in cities all over North America, is set to go public on March 16, in hopes of raising as much as $240 million."

via: Quartz

How Your Shopping Habits Influence What Designers Make
"Most shoppers know that retailers are watching their every move: what they’re searching on store websites, what they’ve bought in the past, and how much money they’re willing to spend. But clothing companies don’t just want to know how they can sell you something their designers have dreamed up; they want to know exactly what you’re looking for and then design it. "

via: Yahoo

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